The Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA) was a unique institution, which introduced capitalist financial principles to the traditional economic life of the Ottoman State. The role of the Administration and its impact on the branches of the state main revenues often become the research subject. There has been a trend to mark a contradictory character of the company. On the one hand the OPDA limited financial sovereignty of the Ottoman State, but on the other hand it improved the general economic development level. Nevertheless, having concentrated on the results, that company archived in its business, scholars failed to pay sufficient attention to its operating measures. That is why it was not very clear what made the OPDA more successful than traditional ottoman financial institutions. Thus the paper aims to fill in this gap by considering official records of the OPDA. Written at the end of the 19th century, in the form of a code for internal use, records represent an important historical source. In order to examine the operational mechanism of the Administration, the paper focuses on the structure and functions of the OPDA, investigates range of duties and competency of its officers, conditions of appointment and dismission, salaries, training opportunities and e.t.c. The author concludes that due to its well-planned organization, high level education and motivation approach, the OPDA developed an effective management model, and helped to raise a new generation of specialists who were not skeptical about European financial experience, and moreover, successfully used it. This study is a part of a growing body of research on European financial management in the 19th century East. Furthermore, it can contribute to future research on economic history.

Presbyterian missionaries in Iran under the rule of Reza Shah had a more contentious relationship with the state than did their Congregationalist counterparts in Turkey under the Kemalist government. By the 1920s, American Board missionaries in Turkey decreased their emphasis on religious education in response to several factors: the failure to convert Muslims, the loss of Christian student populations brought about by World War I, the increasing secularization of Christianity in the United States, and the Kemalist government’s centralization of education under state auspices. The schools focused instead on educating women to pursue university degrees, to pave new professional roads, or to be well-educated mothers. Schools for girls such as the American Collegiate Institute in Izmir were, to a degree, in concert with the Kemalist rhetoric of creating the “new woman.” In Iran, Presbyterian educators at the Tabriz Girls’ School, and the Iran Dokht School in Hamdan embraced similar goals for its women students. The Presbyterians, however, maintained their efforts to provide opportunities for all students to learn about Christianity despite the government’s ban on proselytizing Muslim students. This persistence led to government expropriation and elimination of nearly all of the Presbyterian mission schools in Iran by 1940, whereas some American Board schools in Turkey continue to function as a part of the state educational system still today. This paper will examine the relationships between selected mission-run girls’ schools and the Turkish and Iranian governments with particular reference to the presence of religious in curricular and extra-curricular activities. It will also examine the degree to which these mission schools addressed the governments’ goals in educating women to fulfill the “new woman” ideals as defined by each state. Sources include primary documents of principals and teachers in the American Board of Foreign Commissioners papers at the Houghton Library, Harvard University and in the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. Secondary literature on American missions by D. Robert, M. Zirinsky, U. Makdisi, C. Amin, S. Mahdavi, and others will also be consulted.